Tortured Black Panthers speak out against police repression and intimidation

"Once Upon a time, they called me a Terrorist too"

Tortured Black Panthers speak out against police repression and
intimidation and their current struggle with San Francisco police
department, sharing that the torture methods of repression and
coercion used in US prisons in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay were
used on them in 1973. Ron Daniels, Danny Glover and the leadership
of TransAfrica Forum join them on the panel.

Torture similar to methods used in US prisons in Guantanamo Bay and
Abu Ghraib used against members of
The Black Panther Party

On Thursday, December 8, 2005, TransAfrica Forum hosted a
press conference to give voice to three former Black Panther Party
members. Hank Jones, John Bowman, and Ray Boudreaux came to
Washington, DC to discuss their current struggle with the San
Francisco Police Department. They were joined on the panel by Danny
Glover, famous actor and Chairman of the Board-TransAfrica Forum,
Prof. Charles Ogletree-Founder and Executive Director of the Charles
Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice at Harvard Law
School, Ron Daniels, Executive Director-Center for Constitutional
Rights, and Bill Fletcher, President-TransAfrica Forum.

Over the past few months, several former members of the
Black Panther Party were held in contempt and jailed for refusing to
testify before a San Francisco grand jury investigating a police
shooting that took place in 1971. The 34-year-old case evolves from
an incident in which two men armed with shotguns attacked the
Ingleside Police Station resulting in the death of Sgt. John V.
Young, 45, and injuring a civilian clerk. Law enforcement
authorities have always assumed that black radical groups were
involved.

In 1973 when 13 alleged "Black militants" were arrested in
New Orleans, some of them: Jones, Bowman, and Boudreaux, were
tortured for several days by law enforcement authorities in striking
similarity to the methods used on detainees in US prisons at
Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. San Francisco Police Department
Inspectors Frank McCoy and Ed Erdelatz were on site at the New
Orleans police department for the interrogation and torture of the
arrested men. Some of the torture methods used included:

Stripping them naked and beating them with blunt objects

Blind folding them and throwing wool blankets soaked with boiling water over their bodies

Placing electric probes on their genitals and other body parts

Inserting an electric cattle prod in their anus

Punching and kicking

Slamming them into walls while blindfolded

This process lasted for several days until the detectives got the
confessions they wanted.

In 1974, a court in Los Angeles ruled that the San Francisco
and New Orleans police had engaged in what amounted to torture to
extract a confession from one of the men and threw out the tortured
statement. In 1975, a San Francisco grand jury indicted three
suspects, all of who had been tortured in New Orleans, in connection
with the 1971 shooting. However, in 1976, a San Francisco judge
dismissed the indictments finding that the prosecution had failed to
tell the grand jury that the men's confessions had been coerced.

Defense sources state that while these confessions were suppressed,
it appears that this is the basis for the previous and current grand
jury investigations. Inspectors McCoy and Erdelatz have returned
from retirement and have been deputized as federal agents for the
current investigation.

Speaking about McCoy and Erdalatz, John Bowman says, "The
same people who tried to kill me in 1973 are the same people who are
here today, in 2005, trying to destroy me. I mean it literally. I
mean there were people from the forces of the San Francisco Police
Department who participated in harassment, torture, and my
interrogation in 1973. [It is] these same people I have to come in
contact with, I have to go before courts in front of, [those] who
are asking me the same questions that they interrogated and tortured
me for. I have to be confronted with these people and none of these
people have ever been brought to trial. None of these people have
ever been charged with anything. None of these people have ever
been questioned about that!"

The former Black Panthers have determined that though they
remained silent about the interrogation and torture 34 years ago,
they will not make the same mistake twice. With the counsel of Jill
Soffiyah Elijah-Harvard University Law professor, they have formed
the "Committee for Defense of Human Rights" and say "they have
dedicated the rest of their lives" to work on stopping torture. They
want to tell the world how torture has been used often by the US
administration to oppress and repress opposition and dissent, as
well as coerce information. They say that what allowed such torture
to happen was the lack of transparency and accountability had under
Hoover, which is exactly the secrecy that the PATRIOT ACT calls for
today.

"This is a broad general investigation going on under the current
CoIntelPro grown up into the USA PATRIOT Act, [”K] an extension of
what was going on back then," says Hank Jones. "The same violations
of our human and constitutional rights, totally unjust, done in
secret and quietly. We've chosen not to be quiet about this." The
broader implication of this case they say, is that other
organizations will be targeted as potential terrorists, so they want
to educate as many people as soon as possible as to what happened
with them and the Black Panthers. "They are destroying democracy
with this PATRIOT ACT activity," adds Jones, "It's not just confined
to us, and its other activist organizations as well. And it was back
then, under CoIntelPro, [that] all the major civil rights
organizations were under surveillance. The Black Panther Party
became a target under J. Edgar Hoover and designated ”„The Greatest
Threat of National Security to the Nation." ( For more info on
CoIntelPro see:
www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/cointelpro/churchfinalreportIIIc.htm

"When I watched on TV the Twin Towers come down, deep in my heart, I
knew that someone will come by and visit me as soon as they can get
it organized, and they did," says Ray Boudreaux, "because Once Upon
a time, they called me a Terrorist too." To expedite something in
the system, they put ”„Terror' tag on it and it gets done" adds
Boudreaux, "Terror means money. These people have a budget and they
are working it"

"What we hope to accomplish with the Committee for the Defense of
Human Rights' is to educate, inform, and try to move people to
action against the policies that are in effect in the country
today," concludes Hank Jones. "The same fear climate, the same
tactics that were going on in the 60s are prevalent today. [”K] We
claim that we don't torture in this country. I bring some of our
slaves ancestors here today, they can tell you things that would
curl your hair about torture, [”K] not just physical, but
psychological. What's happening to us today is akin to that. Dr King
described Black Folks existence in this country as tiptoed stance,
always on-guard. I want to see this does not happen again, to me, or
us or anybody. This is why we are speaking out and addressing this
today."

"It is ironic" said Bill Fletcher "that instead of having a press
conference in which apologies are being offered to torture to the
individuals here and to many many others who were victims of
CoIntelPro, that instead we are to call attention to the prosecution
of people who were freedom fighters and continue to be."

According to Ron Daniels, the President of the center for
Constitutional Rights, "The anti-war movement and the civil rights
movement had effectively checked the national security state in
relationship to surveillance, intrusive”Kit had blunted it. And many
of the forces particularly on the extreme right had been bristling
and eager for an opportunity to impose new measures. The USA PATRIOT
ACT had already been on the drawing board. The terrorist attacks
provided an opportunity for them to impose them." Daniels adds
that ”„Former Attorney General Ashcroft before he left issued a broad
ranging edict that all the cases that involved any incident where a
police officer had been killed and the case had been closed be re-
opened...And if these men and women can be indicted or harassed, it
sends a chilling effect. It's the Lynne Stewart effect: if you
engage in this, this is what can happen to your life,' referring to
the guilty verdict given to the "radical" human rights attorney
Lynne Stewart who represented Sheikh Abdel-Rahman accused of bombing
the World Trade Center in 1993.

These men have spent their lives trying to help others like
you and I, we all now have an opportunity to reciprocate their
efforts. In so doing we may help to prevent a similar fate from
befalling others or even ourselves. "These gentlemen, Ray Boudreaux,
Hank Jones and others have been victims of the most vicious forms of
American terrorism and torture," says Professor Ogletree. "It takes
a village to protect its Elders, [”Kand] whether on the West Coast
through the support of someone like Danny Glover, and on the East
Coast through people like Ron Daniels in NY, and myself and Soffiya
Elija in Boston, we tell them today, through our presence here and
through our commitment that we will provide a protective blanket
over them. They will not come in this village and take these elders,
except over our dead bodies."

The three former Black Panthers are available for speaking
invitations. For more information, contact Claude Marks at 415-863-
9977 or claude@freedomarchives.org and Jill Soffiyah Elijah at 617-
496-8144 or jelijah@law.harvard.edu.